600,000 debtors to be removed from NCB’s blacklist

BANGKOK, 10 September 2014 – The records of 600,000 debtors who have defaulted on their debt payments for more than 90 days would be removed from the National Credit Bureau (NCB)’s database as part of the Credit Information Protection Committee’s agenda to alleviate the financial difficulty of debtors.

Bank of Thailand (BOT) Assistant Governor Ronadol Noomnonda said that the records of these debtors have been shown in the NCB’s database for eight years or longer.

For this reason, their information would be automatically deleted from the system in order to allow them to secure funds from legitimate lenders once more and prevent them from having to turn to loan sharks. The relaxed regulations have also raised concerns whether it would lead to more bad loans.

95 percent of the 600,000 previously blacklisted debtors were individuals who have overdue debt payments dating back as long as 1998. The remaining 5 percent, however, were corporations that had a relatively low level of outstanding debts.